Official opening of SQF2018: Homeland for the Vagabond and guided tour by the curators Mohammad Salemy and Patrick Schabus18h, Vaska Emanouilova Gallery

SQF2018's exhibition Homeland for the Vagabond can be seen between Nov 9 - Dec 2 at Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, WORKING TIME: Tue-Sat 11:30am - 7pm; Sun 12 - 6pm (the gallery is closed on Mondays).

The exhibition will be focusing on the following questions: How are the concepts of “queer” and "queer identity" changing during a time of increasing austerity, deregulation, poverty, growing racism, nationalisms (including homo-nationalism), social segregation and discrimination? Can these concepts be rethought as part of larger emancipatory social movements? Can new queer movements and discourses contribute to the collective and universal struggle for better life and equal political and social rights for all, or they will remain limited by the queer category’s identitarian legacies? The queer refugees are caught between a rock and a hard place, as their true position is neither fit into the imagination of the political left or right. Homeland for the Vagabond hopes to untangle the Gordian knot of belonging on the one side to a culture with whom one’s sexuality is in conflict and at the same time being perceived in the host country as an eternal other in the asylum giving country, a contradictory double problem that queers who have been forced into exile share.

Nov 10, Saturday

Discussion with Viron Erol Vert16.30-17.15, Fabrika Avtonomia

A discussion focused on the artist's work and the problems treated in his art as well as issues relating to SQF2018's topic.

Discussion with the curators and guests: The place and the voice of the queer migrant in the larger emancipatory struggles in Europe and the world17.30-19.30h, Fabrika AvtonomiaParticipants: Patrick Schabus (co-curator of SQF2018), Borjana Ventsislavova (artist and participant at SQF2018), João Florêncio (Lecturer in History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter), Viktoria Draganova (director, Swimming Pool, Sofia), Neda Genova (Goldsmiths University, Dversia magazine)Moderator: Mohammad Salemy (co-curator of SQF2018)

A spectre is haunting queer communities around the world- the spectre of queer migrants and refugees. As a result, the fiction of a universal gay community is increasingly exposed to be in reality a global class system in which the queer migrants and refugees occupy a unique place. What are the characteristics of this unique place and thus how the reality and voice of queer migrant and refugees can factor in the larger emancipatory struggles in Europe and the world? The discussion raises these questions in the larger frame set by the exhibition Homeland for the Vagabond which focuses on the transformation of the concepts of “queer” and "queer identity" during a time of increasing austerity, deregulation, poverty, growing racism, nationalisms (including homo-nationalism), social segregation and discrimination.